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As the country continues to grapple with high cost of living and soaring prices of essential commodities, it is estimated that about 14.5 million Kenyans are currently food insecure.

The rate of food poverty is highest in rural areas, where about 10.4 million people are living below the food poverty line compared to almost a million in peri-urban and another 3.2 million in core urban areas respectively.

According to Sessional Paper No. 1 of 2023 on Kenya National Population Policy for Sustainable Development, Turkana county is the worst hit by food scarcity at 66 per cent as Meru and Nyeri counties remain food secure at 15.5 per cent each.

The report published by the National Council on Population and Development (NCPD) indicates that the prevalence of undernourishment in the country declined gradually from 33 per cent in 2003 to 29.4 per cent in 2017.

Effects of Covid 19 pandemic that increased overall poverty levels by four per cent as of November 2020 representing approximately two million Kenyans exacerbated the plight of the hungry Kenyans.

International prices

NCPD said that as per 2011 international prices, the number of Kenyans living on less than two dollars a day as per international prices declined from 43.7 per cent in 2005 to 36.8 per cent in 2015.

Although the percentage of population below the poverty line declined from 55.5 per cent in 2000 to 36.8 per cent in 2015, the absolute numbers have increased after the outbreak of corona virus pandemic.

The report that has classified labour as a driving force for economic growth has put the rate of unemployment among Kenyans at 12 per cent where those below 35 years are most affected by lack of jobs at 68 per cent.

“Labour force participation rate among the working age was 74 per cent in 2019. It was the highest for age cohort 35 to 64 at 34.1 per cent while the lowest was for the age cohort 15 to17 at 2 per cent,” NCPD said in the sessional paper.

Terming employment as the primary means of addressing household poverty, the council considered access to decent work, long term unemployment, underemployment and labour inactivity in evaluating the status of Kenyan labour market.

Further, NCPD reports that child labour is still rampant in Kenya and about 7.8 per cent of children aged 5-14 were in some employment.

Shockingly, majority of the Kenyan youth entering the productive age at 20 to 24 years have the highest rates of labour underutilisation at 27.1 per cent.

Another 15.6 per cent of the youth aged 15 to 34 years are reportedly neither in education, employment or training compared to their older counterparts at the age of 20 to 24 and 25 to 29 representing 24 and 19.8 per cent, respectively who are employed or in educational or training institutions.

As of 2020, human capital which was evaluated using the 2018 World Bank index was estimated to be 0.55 which meant that about 55 per cent of children born in Kenya today will grow up to be, at best, half as productive as they could.